I understand there are 600 other coins and that banks might be involved in trying to put in place there own mechanisms based on the blockchain but now that bitcoin has become as big as it has is there even a 10% chance that anything could replace bitcoin in the next few years.

I think it's much higher than a 10% chance. Yes, Bitcoin is a propelling proposition, given the limited supply and the amount of people willing to pay to have a share of the it, but you might be underestimating what the central banks and other centralized powers will do to take control as far as a global currency goes. If fiat currencies become unpopular, and people resort to gold and bitcoin, who knows what governments will do to control inflation.

The powers that be seem to be finding great success is regulating Bitcoin to the fringes and making it impractical for use as a mainstream currency. Couple that with the fact there's been no major improvements to the protocol since 2009 or 2010, and you have a recipe for disaster.

If core can't agree on a single 1-line code edit, how can bitcoin possibly compete in this world of rapid technological change.

It has lots of competition, obviously, but within the digital world itself? I would say very little. It has dominated this space.

Mention me a single coin that is competition to Bitcoin? Not even the XT fork was any competition. I don't see a single reason to use anything but Bitcoin (and solving the discrepancies inside Bitcoin Core through BIPs). Maybe Ethereum, maybe, could have a solid reason to exist in the future, and it wouldn't still be competition, ETH and BTC would compliment each other.

Has anyone seen this GNU Taler thing? They say make pretty big claims taler.net

Never heard of it before now.

Sounds like yet another tokenised fiat payment system with some bells and whistles like every other supposed 'Bitcoin killer'. As ever it's not the same thing at all. Maybe a Ripple killer but I've no idea how Ripple works so wouldn't know.

I understand there are 600 other coins and that banks might be involved in trying to put in place there own mechanisms based on the blockchain but now that bitcoin has become as big as it has is there even a 10% chance that anything could replace bitcoin in the next few years.

I understand there are 600 other coins and that banks might be involved in trying to put in place there own mechanisms based on the blockchain but now that bitcoin has become as big as it has is there even a 10% chance that anything could replace bitcoin in the next few years.

Bitcoin never felt having any competition, but I think the governments and the banks do. Thats why they always trying to compete bitcoin with creating their own cryptocurrency and blockchain technology.

Bitcoin faces no competition from other decentralised cryptos. Its competition is banks stealing the blockchain technology and make there own centralised version of a crypto. They have money, clients and government support. Will be tough for bitcoin when bank cryptos get off ground.

Bitcoin faces no competition from other decentralised cryptos. Its competition is banks stealing the blockchain technology and make there own centralised version of a crypto. They have money, clients and government support. Will be tough for bitcoin when bank cryptos get off ground.

Nope. They're perfectly happy with their existing currencies and no retail bank in living memory has ever created a standalone currency. They'll use all the blockchain wonders to make existing currencies work faster and smoother.

Bitcoin never felt having any competition, but I think the governments and the banks do. Thats why they always trying to compete bitcoin with creating their own cryptocurrency and blockchain technology.

Banks view bitcoins as threat to the fiat currency, if we look at the present scenario than bitcoins doesn't have any competition but the things would not be the same in the future, bitcoins will definitely face some competition from new currencies in the future and the fact is that bitcoin can never replace a major currency it would be used only as a secondary currency.